During the composition of Nothing Was the Same, Drake started his own record label in late 2012 with producer Noah "40" Shebib and business partner Oliver El-Khatib. Drake sought for an avenue to release his own music, as well helping in the nurturing of other artists, while Shebib and El-Khatib yearned to start a label with a distinct sound, prompting the trio to team up to form OVO Sound.[511] The name is an abbreviation derived from the October's Very Own moniker Drake used to publish his earlier projects. The label is currently distributed by Warner Bros. Records.
PSF: In 1984 you released Sexteen the second LP by The Moberlys in France. Confusingly, in 1995, a CD (on ATM Records) was released with the same name but some other songs and some missing. What led to that?JB: I'm not sure why that was, probably because there had been an album titled Sexteen which sold pretty well in the mid-'80's and the thought was by the label was that people would buy it for that reason. This was kind of the tail end of the era, when everything was coming out on CD which had been released on vinyl for the first time, people would buy stuff on CD that they knew about from vinyl. I think that was the reason, for name recognition, but I'm not sure. It was the label's idea. It was my idea to release that one, more or less chronicling the first band, with Steve Grindle, Ernie Sapiro and Bill Walters and with a few others, though there were a few other notable folks who contributed. Those players included Cerar, Ataa Adjiri (who is one of my best friends still), Drake Eubank (who played drums on the first single in '77), Sheldon Gomberg (currently a very cool LA based producer-engineer), Bill Rieflin (who went on to R.E.M. and Ministry), Rabinowitz, Bar-Illan, Bloch and Drewry. The reason the latter three were involved was because we recorded "I Return," a song by Berman and I, which I associated with the early band. My thought was to follow it up with a retrospect from the version of the band anchored by Drewry, Keil and Oyabe. That came to fruition by way of a French label a few years later, Pop The Balloon, as the Seattle-New York-Los Angeles album by Jim Basnight and the Moberlys. The Sexteen LP on Lolita (which is dated 1984, but actually came out in early 1985), was the first release in Europe and the thinking was that it should have the best material at the time. The tracks were picked by a combination of Randall Wixen (who has gone on to the top of the music publishing world in LA, primarily with rock acts) and the label and we were fine with the choices. It had a couple of new tunes from our 2nd set of recordings in Vancouver in 1984, with Glenn Oyabe on guitar, all four of the tracks we released on the 1984 EP, We'll Always Be in Love from the Seattle Syndrome compilation album in 1981, and a number of tracks from the 1979 Moberlys LP and "She Got Fucked" from the 1977 single. All of the songs from the Lolita LP ended up on CD on either the Sexteen CD or Seattle-New York-Los Angeles, except the two cover tunes- "Cinderella" by the Sonics and "Alone with Her" by the Wailers, other than "Rebel Kind" a Modernettes cover, which was on Seattle-New York-Los Angeles. All three tracks, you'll notice are included in the all covers CD I'm planning for 2020. As long as I'm explaining about the covers CD album, which I've yet to master and come up with a final title, there are three songs by Mike Czekaj. Mike and I go back to NYC in the early '80's. His band, the Stratford Survivors, backed me up when I moved to Bridgeport CT in late 1982. We did a few gigs in Connecticut and I brought them to Manhattan to record with me, when Genya Ravan produced a couple of tracks with me in early '83. Those tracks have never been released, but one was a version of "I Want to Be Yours," which was redone later that year in Vancouver with Drewry, Keil and Rabinowitz. The other was a version of "Treat Her Right," a standard at NY Moberlys shows in the early '80's, which Johnny Thunders recorded on his covers album Copy Cats in 1988. Johnny told me after seeing the Moberlys do it at his 30th birthday party gig that he dug it. No idea if it influenced him doing that tune, but if us doing it gave him any ideas or reminded him of it, that would make me very proud. The version we did with Genya used an electric violin player, sounding like a lead guitar player. I decided not to include it on the covers album, as there are other tracks I like better, but the concept was one I used quite a bit later on with Seattle violin players Geoffrey Castle and Clayton Park on The Jim Basnight Thing (1997) and Recovery Room (2004) albums. But Czekaj and I stayed in touch and when he moved to LA with the Fuzztones in 1986. We started a songwriting partnership. It yielded a lot of great tunes which have surfaced or been revamped throughout my recording career: "My Vision of You," "Price of Our Insanity" (with Joey Alkes, who co-wrote "Million Miles Away" with Peter Case), "Still a Part of Me," "Talk Is Cheap" (with Alkes) and "Jasmine Perfume" (with Alkes) from the Pop Top album (1993). There was also: "Baby Jane" (with Kelly Wheeler, who appeared in a post Moberlys band with Czekaj, Bloch and myself) from the Rockinghams Makin' Bacon album (1999)."Don't Wait Up" (with Alkes and Barry Gruber, who I re-wrote the song with in 1996) from the Jim Basnight Thing album (1997)."What I Wouldn't Do," "Genius of Love" (with Alkes) and "She Don't Rock" from the Seattle-New York-Los Angeles album (2001)."Open Letter" from the Introducing Jim Basnight album (2012)."Code to Live By" from the Not Changing album (2019). There are three songs on my albums which were Mike's tunes and though I added touches to my versions of them- they were finished tunes when he shared them with me. Those are credited 100% to Czekaj and include the following: "Red Light Moon" from the Jim Basnight Thing album (1997)."Princess" from the Recovery Room album (2004)."Midnight Mission Hit Parade" from the Introducing Jim Basnight album (2012). I also decided to include them on the cover songs album I'm planning as he is also an artist in his own right, with a great rock and roll band on the East coast, out of Brooklyn NY now called the Live Ones (a lyric in "Red Light Moon" incidentally) and deserves to be recognized as such.See Part II of our Jim Basnight interview
VA Ministry Of Sound Anthems HipHop II 2012
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